Are you ready for the Summer?
Welcome, Summer, my favorite time of year!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways …
What I truly love about summer are burnished memories of that school bell ringing on an afternoon in mid-June, spelling liberation from the annual trials and tribulations of reading, writing, and getting beaten up by the fifth grade girls.
“No more classrooms, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks” was truly a rallying cry in a time when teacher’s dirty looks meant a disapproving glare because eating your homework had become a regular part of your dog's diet rather than an ardent and soulful “Come hither, Timmy, you do so remind me of Colin Firth!”
And it seemed incredible that even as we grew older and school was displaced by a new type of daily endeavor that didn’t recognize that it ought to come to a full two and a half month hiatus in mid-June every year, the feeling of Summer as a liberation still remained with me for years to come.
Until one year in the 1980’s when it stopped as dead as the career of a moderate in the Republican Party!
And then it seemed incredible that although the feeling of Summer Liberation was gone forever, continuing unto the present day was and is that recurrent nightmare that I'm still in school, facing an enormous final I haven't studied for, and will be sold into life-long bondage to the goofiest six members of the school's Audio-Visual Club if I flunk!
But what I truly love about Summer is the wonderful warm weather!
What can match the joy of knowing you can go outside anytime without a thought to the elements, aside from my usual obsessing about cadmium, and never have to worry about bundling up?
Yes, that six second walk from air conditioned house to air conditioned car when it’s 81 degrees out is so incredibly more comfortable than that six second walk from heated house to heated car when it’s 18, don't you agree?
And the great weather brings with it a whole complement of outdoor fun with camping, boating, fishing, and the mountains!
Of course, I get nauseous whenever I climb aboard any type of nautical vessel, camping may involve spiders!, fishing is cruel and heartless …. to the fish, I might point out, as well as to me …. and mountains, well, I have fear of heights whenever I step on a scale in the drug store to check my weight and fortune.
But what I truly love about Summer is hitting that beach!
Though it’s strange how global warming --- violently unleashed all throughout the globe --- has so far failed to make its way to New Jersey, where the ocean water remains so arctic even the jellyfish opt anymore mostly for mini-golf.
Who the jellyfish are leaving behind to sting folks in the water I don’t know, but I’ll bet they’re pleased with the progress reports they’re getting on days I venture out into the limb numbing, teeth chattering, something-I’m-not-engaged-to-just-grabbed-my-leg foaming surf and brine.
But back relaxing on the beach, feet in the sand, sun overhead, and all’s well!
That is, until the copperhead flies begin dive bombing me in the same precipitous trajectory as a Ben Affleck movie the week after release, the sun bakes the top of my insufficiently hair-cushioned head such that Poppin' Fresh dinner rolls all but pop out the top of my scalp, and sand granules settle intractably between both of my contact lenses and my adjacent eyeballs until droves of passing young bikini–clad women cannot help but utter:
“Look, that elderly man is crying! It must be tough to be that goofy looking and that old!”
But what I truly love about Summer is sitting here in my highly air conditioned den, beer in hand, serene in the knowledge that this July the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm will finally hit HBO!
After that, there’s not much happening on TV until the Fall.
Ahhh, the Fall!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways ….
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